This Week's Meals

Last week's meals honestly left something to be desired. I realized while cooking our hot dogs and mac n cheese that it was wayyyyyyyy more calories than I thought. The ease of the meal wasn't worth the extra calories and the crappy nutrition. So back to new recipes I go.

I honestly was going to cancel our Winder Farms order this week because I ran out of ideas! But I scoured Pinterest and found some new recipes that we'll try. If we like them I'll add them to my list of go-to meals so eventually I won't have to do so much research every week.

This week in our Produce Box we got:

Lettuce
Red Bell Pepper
Yellow Pepper
Local Utah Red Onions
Leeks (????????)
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Cucumbers
Granny Smith Apples
Fancy Oranges (what makes them fancy?)
Cantaloupe
Grapefruits

As you can tell, I have zero experience cooking with leeks. But THE BOX makes me be adventurous and I kinda like it. So here's the plan (that we'll probably deviate from a little bit, but it's nice to have):

DINNERS

Monday - Fettucini with Pesto and Chicken
Tuesday - Taco Tuesday
Wednesday - Hawaiian Pork (found a cheap/easy packaged marinade...next power up level is to make the marinade myself)
Thursday - Roasted Veggie Pasta Salad and Chicken
Friday - Quinoa Salad with Sautéed Leeks and Feta
Saturday - Steak Stir Fry
Sunday - Veggie and Steak Kabobs with Roasted Potato Wedges

SNACKS

Sliced Cucumbers (with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper)
Apples
Oranges
Cantaloupe
Grapefruit
Ants on a Log

Every meal except for Wednesday has a good amount of (or at least some) vegetables in it, which is my goal. Basil pesto's not a vegetable but it's something! It's real. Counting it. Ideally I would add roasted cherry tomatoes to tonight's meal, but I'm just too lazy to go do the big shop tonight.

My other goal with meals is to eat clean. I'm trying to avoid packaged stuff as much as possible, but it's just going to happen a night or two. I read up on regulating my hormones to keep my PCOS under control. The blood tests say my hormones are regular right now, but I bet they could always be better.

One of the things I found was to avoid processed foods, since your body doesn't recognize the ingredients in those foods as actual food, which messes up your hormones. The articles I read also told me to get tons of sleep (done), exercise (done), avoid plastic bottles and Tupperware (eh, I'm not that into it yet) and limit caffeine (I drink a small Coke daily, but that will stop when we move to Alaska). I also have to start avoiding vegetable oil, so I guess I better pull out the coconut oil and start cooking with that again. Side note: I've learned that fat is not the enemy. In fact, it keeps you full and good fats like coconut oil or real butter are better for you than vegetable oil. So I won't feel bad about cooking with butter. FOOD IS SO INTERESTING.

Stay tuned for some posts about PCOS awareness and management.